All Eyes on Iran

By Joel C. Rosenberg

All eyes are on Iran today. Please be praying for the Iranian people. Humanly speaking, it’s almost impossible for anything good to come out of today’s rigged “elections.”

First, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his cabinet of clerics (the “Guardian Council”) have already chosen four presidential contenders. They denied another 450 or so applicants from even being considered. This gives you a little taste of what democracy means in Iran. Thus, Khamenei and the Radical mullahs around him have already chosen four people they want the country to know would be acceptable to them — that is, people who are loyal to the Revolution, will follow the wishes of the Supreme Leader, and will prepare the way of the coming of the Islamic Messiah known as the Twelfth Imam or the Mahdi.

Second, no matter who “wins,” it doesn’t really matter in any practical sense. In Iran’s Sharia-law driven legal system, all authority is vested in the hands of the Supreme Leader. The role of the president in many ways is to be the public face and voice of the Supreme Leader to the nation and the world. For the last four years, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been been that face and voice precisely because Khamenei wanted him to be.

Third, the system really is rigged. Iranians will feel like they are exercising their right to choose their next leader. But Khamenei is pulling strings behind the scenes to engineer the “choosing” of his preferred candidate. The only drama is finding out whom Khamenei wants to be the face and voice of Iran for the next four years, and whether he believes Ahmadinejad has outlived his usefulness.

Fourth, that said, the God of the Bible — the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob — is in control. The Lord God Himself is all sovereign and He ultimately will determine who will run Iran, and will do so for His own purposes. Daniel 2:21 tells us that “He removes kings and establishes kings.” While humanly speaking all seems to be lost in Iran, this isn’t really the case. The truth is that Jesus Christ is drawing millions of Iranians away from Islam to become His followers. As I describe in Inside The Revolution in detail, the Lord is using radio broadcasting, satellite TV technology and the Internet to get the good news of salvation to the Iranian people. Jesus is also appearing to many personally, telling them to, “Come, follow Me” — and they are. Iranian Christian leaders tell me they expect more than 10,000 house churches to be planted in Iran in the next 12 to 18 months because Christianity is growing so fast in that country. And one of the main reasons people are abandoning Islam and becoming followers of Jesus is because of the tyrannical leadership of the country. Starting with the Ayatollah Khomeini, and right up to the present with the Ayatollah Khamenei, such cruel, Radical dictators are causing Iranians to become deeply disillusioned with Islam and eager to search for true peace. They are finding it in the Prince of Peace. So, let us pray earnestly for the Iranian people that no matter who wins, they will choose Jesus Christ, the King of kings and the Lord of lords this year.

Alireza Jafarzadeh is a leading Iranian pro-democracy dissident. He is based in Washington. He gives a summary of the background of the four “candidates” running for president in Iran today. Even this brief snapshot shows how Radical any one of them will be.

“Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, by his own admission, was part of the quintet of the Central Committee of the Office of the Unity which led and operationally oversaw the takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979. He was the special operations officer in the 6th special corps of IRGC’s Qods Force, responsible for sabotage and cross-border missions. In his current hat, he oversees his government’s expanding drive to perfect the nuclear fuel cycle and acquire the ultimate weapon.
“Mir Hossein Moussavi is the current reincarnation of the moderate political animal in Iran. He was a founding member of the Islamic Republic Party - think of it as the mullahs’ Third Reich. Among honors on his resume, he lists: 144 extraterritorial assassinations during the premiership, the massacre of nearly 30,000 political prisoners on the eve of the signing of the 1988 UN Iran-Iraq cease-fire accord, and the 1983 embassy and marine barrack bombings in Beirut.
“Mohsen Rezai ranks high in the pantheon of terror. He commanded the IRGC during the disastrous war with Iraq, with ultimate responsibility for sending tens of thousands of under-aged adults to their death in the battle fronts as human mine sweepers, many of whom were shrouded in army-issued blankets to prevent their body parts from splattering. Rezai played a decisive role in coordinating and directing the 1994 bombing in Buenos Aires, for which he was implicated by an Argentine court and for whom, in 2007, Interpol issued an arrest warrant.
“Mehdi Karoubi is the least consequential. Nevertheless, he occupies a special place among the regime hierarchy. For, he is a permanent member of the Expediency Council, chaired by former president, Rafsanjani.”

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